


at every pore with instant fires

by yonderdarling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Post-Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Regeneration, Spoilers for Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, massive spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 15:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11383077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/pseuds/yonderdarling
Summary: "For, Lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate."





	at every pore with instant fires

**Author's Note:**

> Wow I love how!! The Doctor and Missy retired to France together, adopted two dogs and a cat, and were featured on Kevin McCloud's Grand Designs while they renovated their 18th century chateau!! And then they lived happily ever after!!
> 
> Set after the Christmas episode. Hammered out, looked over by Ilana and Chris and Kiara. Title and summary both from To His Coy Mistress.

He has to see at least, and there's little time. The Doctor stands with a groan, watches his predecessor's TARDIS wheeze, fade out of sight. The Doctor licks his cracked lips, presses down on his sternum. The flare of regeneration energy - heat, but he knows how it will look, curling out of his body - abates, and he coughs, spits into the snow.

It takes a lot to pilot the TARDIS back to the ruined colony ship; not because of the black hole, the TARDIS has mastered this particular instance by now. No, it's him. He can hardly walk, and the vision in his right eye is going. At least he had all that practise at being blind. The Doctor squints at the scanner screen.

"Life readings," he says, and sees the glow of bacteria, a few odd rodents. "Uh - bicardiovascular, please. You know what I'm looking for."

And the screen goes black.

"There it is, then," the Doctor says. He falls back against the railing, breathes out. He coughs again, rubs his eyes. "I guess it didn't work? It didn't work." He sniffs. "Come on now."

And then, the TARDIS lands, soft. Still, he feels the jolt in his bones.

"What is it?"

The doors open, and show an ash-strewn battlefield, a few struggling trees. Smouldering ruins. The Doctor coughs as smoke billows into the TARDIS.

"Why?" The TARDIS creaks around him, and the Doctor pats the console. "I - " he begins. "Yes." His hands burn, and he curls and uncurls his fingers. "I think - the moment, the preparation, all that."

The Doctor sniffs, looks over at the scanner again. He squints. Reaches up with one tired, aching hand and turns the contrast dial.

Red. Faint, faint, faint red. More pink, but the whitest shade of pink imaginable.

It's still filtering for two hearts. The Doctor presses his hand against the screen. He counts, measures, murmuring under his breath. Then, his foggy brain clearing, he brings out his screwdriver and sets it carefully. He picks up his cane - which the First Doctor had pushed onto him, saying he needed it more than…he…did, and the Doctor had taken it. He takes it now, makes his way to the door, slowly, slowly, carefully, feet heavily, carefully placed.

The Doctor circles the TARDIS, screwdriver held out with his free hand, which trembles with the effort of movement, with holding back his regeneration. It beeps in a strict pattern - two slow beeps, then a second of silence, then two fast beeps, another second. Repeat.

He steps with the rhythm, pushing through the pain. Clouds of ash rise from his footfalls, and his breath rasps loudly in the silent, dying world. Occasionally he steps over or around a Cyberman leg or head. When he trips over a charred log, it feels like the end of the world, because he has to stand. And, stand he does. It takes an eternity, and he keeps going, as the beeps grow more steady, the second growing shorter.

There's the gnarled, burnt trunk of a tree lying curled on the ground, and when he points the screwdriver at it, the beeps become a steady, continuous whine.

"Okay," he says, and tries to walk faster, pushing through the ash and debris. "Okay, okay - "

A blur of purple against the grey.

"Missy," the Doctor says, and drops the cane, staggers forwards, stops, forces his hand to stop glowing. "Missy. Missy. Missy."

The blur is the bottom corner of her skirt, and her clearly broken leg, and her shoe, and he reaches her, drops to his knees. The tree's fallen over her, but not onto her, and it's easier to just - strength born of adrenaline and panic and he's running out of time - he yanks. He pulls Missy out from her small divot, brushes dust from her face, sees the cuts and bruises all over her skin. Feels how cold she is.

Time Lords run cold. Not that cold.

"Missy, Missy - " He jabs his fingers at her neck, looking for a pulse. Nothing. "Missy?" Finds her wrist. Nothing. "Missy. Missy, I can't find a pulse." He coughs, and there's blood on her face. His. The Doctor swipes it away. "Missy, this isn't like you. Missy?"

The sonic screwdriver, which has whined all this time, fades into silence.

"Missy? Missy?" His voice breaks, and he pulls her across into his lap. "I'll warm you up." Missy's head lolls, and he steadies it, tries to make her comfortable. He rubs her arm, limp and thin in her coat. "Get you warm, and then I'll - we'll - "

She's not moving. There's no pulse.

"Were you trying to come back?" the Doctor whispers. "This wasn't your last one, you told me. You swore. I said we'd see every star, and I - " His hands grow hot, and his vision swims, and he sees the ash lighting up gold around him. The Doctor blinks, and feels tears on his grimy face. "I promised. And I promised Bill, and she's gone, and I promised - Susan, I'd go back, and I promised. I promised, and you promised, and you did it." He dips his head, presses his forehead against Missy's, cradles the back of her skull, the texture of her hair familiar against his fingers. "Here I go, I suppose - "

Her body stiffens against him, thrashes, and Missy gasps violently. Shocked, the Doctor can't hold her, lets her shake out of his arms, back into the ash. She seizes for a moment, eyes wide and staring blankly out, her mouth open, sucking in oxygen and dirt in huge gasps.

The Doctor, his vision cleared by the regeneration energy, steadies her head, stops her hurting herself. A minute passes, then two. Missy goes limp, her eyes shut, with one final breath. The Doctor lets his head drop, strokes his grimy thumbs across her dirty face. He brushes her hair back off her forehead, straightens her bow.

"You've always been fussy," he says, and sniffs. "Well, so have I."

The sonic beeps again, pauses. Beeps twice. Beeps twice again, then pauses.

Beeps.

"Missy?"

The Doctor lets his hand trail to her neck, presses his fingers against her jugular. Even as he does, one of Missy's hands comes up to grip clumsily at his shirtsleeve, and for a moment he's thrown back to the Vault, years ago, when he'd carried her to bed after she'd cried herself to sleep on the floor. Missy had woken briefly, tucked her face against his chest, clutched at his arm like it was a life preserver.

She's turning her head towards him now, eyes so, so blue against the grey world around them. Still unfocused, tear-filled. Missy tries to speak, and chokes. She coughs, swallows, coughs. Tries again.

"Doctor?" it's a rasp. "Doctor?"

"Missy."

"I came back," she says. "I was always going to come back."

"You - "

"I had to end it," she says, and tears begin to roll down her face. "Doctor, he used the Beta-blocker setting. Doctor, I can't - I can't - "

The Doctor picks her up, drags her in his lap. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, lifts her so he can press her forehead against his. Their noses brush. The dust settles around them. Missy keeps talking, low, frantic.

"Why aren't I dead? Where are we? Where is he? Why do you smell like home? Doctor, you're regenerating, Doctor - "

"Shh, shh, save your strength," the Doctor says, and Missy cups his face with her hand, strokes his cheek. "Look at you. Look at you. You were magnificent." He tips his head, kisses her palm.

Missy winces. "One of my fingers is broken."

"Sorry."

"It's okay."

He lowers her so he can study her expression, and she can see his face. Missy gives him a wobbly smile, eyelids heavy.

"What did he do?"

"Laser screwdriver, has a beta-blocker setting," Missy says. "For - executing Time Lords."

"So regenerate." Another flare in his chest, his hearts pounding.

"Doctor, I can't. It's not a _death_ sentence, it's an _execution_." It makes more sense in the original Gallifreyan. "Doctor, I told him, I was going back, to help you, and he shot me in the back, Doctor. I was coming back. I'm - "

"I'm so proud of you," says the Doctor. He kisses her forehead, breathes in her smell under the ash and the smoke and the death around them. He speaks against her skin. "I'm so proud of you. My friend."

And suddenly, by his ear, there's a sickening crack. Missy hisses, slides out of his lap onto the dirt. She examines her hand, flexing her fingers.

"Doctor?" Then she twists, looks at him properly. "Doctor, you're regenerating."

"I've been doing that for a while," he says, trying to smile. "A few weeks."

"Weeks?"

"Weeks."

"Doctor - "

He kisses her, and it's a bad kiss. It's clumsy, and they knock teeth, and everything in him is burning and prickling with energy, and everything around them is dying, and Missy tastes like dirt and ash while he tastes like blood. He pulls back, and Missy's lips glow briefly. She claps a hand over her mouth.

"No," she says. "No, no, no no - "

"You can do what I do, now, if you just - "

"No," she says. And then Missy kisses him again, clambering into his lap, quicker now she's had some regeneration energy, chest to chest, her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, his arms around her waist and up her back.

Missy tucks her head into the crook of his shoulder, and he feels her tears trickling down his neck. "Doctor, don't leave me here all alone. Don't give me that."

"It's a gift. You can do what I do, be who I've always tried to be. Can you do that for me?"

A pause. Missy's hand in his hair, and her other hand over his hearts.

"Two hearts," she says. "Both of them - "

The Doctor presses a kiss to her temple. "Yours."

"Doctor."

"Yeah?"

"How many weeks?"

"Since - " Bill, Bill, Bill, _Bill_ , and Missy strokes his hair, his thoughts bleeding from his mind to hers. "Two weeks, three days, four hours, nineteen minutes. Give or take."

Missy taps her fingers along his chest, slides them into the gaps between his shirt buttons. "Two weeks of stored artron energy."

He kisses her again, this time in her dirty hair. He took too long to warm to kissing, in this regeneration. He's got River to thank for -

"I thought I was your first kiss this body," Missy murmurs. "I think you shouted something in that regard at me a few months ago."

"First and second. You, you, and River."

"I was here first, and now I'm here again. I'm here."

"Mmhmm." Still pressed against her back, the Doctor's hands begin to glow. He sighs. "Missy."

"If you force this regeneration on me, you Judas - "

"It's not forcing, it's a gift."

Missy raises her head, looks him in the eyes. She's still crying, tears rolling down her face. The Doctor leans over and kisses her cheek, tastes the salt on his mouth.

"Well I don't want it," Missy says. "You told me. This is where we stand. This is where we fall."

His brain, synapses renewed by regeneration energy, sparks.

"Missy. Oh, Missy, Missy, Missy - " he cups her face with his glowing hands, looks into her shining eyes. "Missy, the _Judas tree_."

"It's poisonous."

"I know," he says, and kisses her, thinking of World War II and Melody Pond and River Song, and Missy makes a surprised noise into his mouth. He pulls back. "Stand up."

She shifts out of his lap, stands carefully, wobbles.

"You had a broken leg," says the Doctor.

Missy looks down, looks back up. "Doctor." Then, "Doctor."

"You had a broken finger. I was going blind. Two weeks of stored regenerative energy - "

Missy's staring at him like he's offering her the stars in his hands. Dirty and dusty and bloody, she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He grins, and feels his face growing warm, glowing with golden light.

"Two weeks might just do it," he says, and holds out his hand. "Either we both survive, or we both - do you - "

Missy takes one final look at him. "I do," she says, and ignoring his hand, steps across until they're chest to chest. She winds one arm around his waist, grips his shoulder with her free hand, fingers digging in. "Doctor?"

He grits his teeth. "You ready? I've never been very good at this."

Missy looks up at him, smiles, her eyes soft, reflecting the light coming from inside him. "I'll help you through," she says, and doesn't close her eyes even as he uncoils the heat and light in his chest and lets it all come burning out of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it - hope this heals some of the wounds after the finale too. Thank you for reading, and comments and feedback are always appreciated.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And The Last Age Should Show Your Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403666) by [Quanna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quanna/pseuds/Quanna)




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